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Major Nelson: Xbox One OS Is A 'Long Game'

An Xbox One system update originally scheduled for Tuesday has been delayed until later in the week, causing some trepidation in the Xbox community. Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb took to reddit to talk a little about the update, and found himself among some testy Xbox gamers. While he didn’t give a lot of information about the update, or when it would actually be arriving, he did have this to say about the broader picture:

“We’ve got a lot of great stuff in store for Xbox One. It took years for the Xbox 360 to become a mature, feature laden platform. We’ve got the same long game planned for the Xbox One.”

It’s a point well taken, though it’s probably best not to think too much about the Xbox 360 launch, which saw giant numbers of consoles completely incapacitated by the notorious “red ring of death.” The Xbox One OS came in unfinished — the vast majority of reviews traded on some notion of “the console of the future, just not yet.” It remains perfectly serviceable for some things, but it’s a far cry from the lightning fast, fully integrated experience that we’ve been promised. It’s unclear when a console like that might arrive, the vague notion of a “long game” aside.

Xbox One Controller (Photo credit: mastermaq)

The Xbox 360 is an excellent model, however — that console totally transformed some of the basic parts of its user experience over the course of its lifecycle, shifting from a pure gaming device into a multimedia machine that proved the prototype for the Xbox One. The competition, however, is very different this time around. The 360 had a year to establish itself over the PS3, and then, arguably, another year brought about by Sony'sSony's prohibitive price point. This time, however, the PS4 has come out cheap and toothy. The degree to which the “long game” will be defined by which console can establish itself in the short game remains to be seen.

Both the system updates and Major Nelson’s comments should serve to remind gamers what a dicey proposition it is to buy any console at launch. Best to wait a year for more games, a better OS, and more stable hardware. The Xbox One gets Titanfall in early March, which may yet be the first must-buy IP of the current console generation.

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